To build outside Miami-Dade’s development zone, tractor company needs 1 more vote

With hopes of flipping a Miami-Dade commissioner back to its side, Kelly Tractor on Tuesday got a one-month delay for a county vote on whether it can build a company headquarters on a tree farm outside the Urban Development Boundary.

The deferral until the June 2 County Commission meeting is the latest delay in a showdown vote on a project that in February was vetoed by Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

Levine Cava continues to oppose the Doral company’s plans for a new headquarters, saying it wants to circumvent too many county planning rules to build outside the “UDB” — the nickname for the Urban Development Boundary.

That planning boundary divides suburban development from the county’s designated rural and environmentally sensitive land, and it’s only designed to expand when construction sites become too scarce inside the UDB. Levine Cava’s planning staff said Kelly has not established the need to build on the site of the 246-acre tree farm off of the Dolphin Expressway, including a compelling case for why the company couldn’t expand at its current 51-acre headquarters in Doral.

“I do not believe they’ve provided an adequate case for a project of this size outside of the Urban Development Boundary,” Levine Cava told commissioners.

Kelly already has support from a majority of the 13 county commissioners to build a complex that would include offices, repair shops and storage for the fleet of Caterpillar generators and heavy machinery that Kelly currently sells and services in Doral.

“They really need to expand their operations in a significant way,” Paul Lambert, a consultant for Kelly, told commissioners.

While a majority of commissioners support Kelly, the company needs nine votes to win approval for an application that seeks to build outside the Urban Development Boundary without requesting that the line itself move to accommodate the construction. It appeared that ninth vote was out of reach when, following Levine Cava’s Feb. 1 veto, Commissioner Raquel Regalado switched positions and announced she would vote against Kelly’s plan after supporting it during the initial approval vote on Jan. 22.

But at Tuesday’s meeting, Regalado seemed to be warming up to the changes Kelly has been making to its proposal.

“I think we’re 90% there,” Regalado said.

Kelly’s changes since the mayor’s veto include a pledge to protect wetlands on the site — a change Levine Cava said largely satisfied her environmental concerns about the plan. Regalado also praised Kelly for submitting a detailed breakdown on why its expansion plans wouldn’t be feasible inside the UDB — including the need for extensive indoor storage for the electric tractors that are considered key to future Caterpillar sales.

Regalado requested a delay of Tuesday’s vote to get more information from Kelly on why its business needs the site in question.

Environmental groups say that approving Kelly’s plans would lift most restrictions on the property and let a potential future owner build what they wanted there.

If Kelly had pursued an actual expansion of the UDB, county rules would require a parallel zoning application that would lock in the building plans too, said Laura Reynolds, head of the Hold the Line Coalition. The advocacy group usually opposes UDB expansions, but Reynolds argues that Kelly should be going through the UDB expansion process with its plans. “We’re saying just apply the right way,” she said.

Chris Kelly, president of the family-owned company, said county administrators recommended bypassing the typical UDB expansion process in favor of the current application, which seeks to change some county rules to allow the headquarters construction. “UDB was kind of a bad word, so we proceeded in that [other] direction,” he told reporters after the deferral vote. The Levine Cava administration says it didn’t endorse Kelly’s current application route.

Should Regalado switch back to voting for Kelly’s proposal, that would give the company the nine votes needed for approval. That’s also the threshold for overturning a second veto from Levine Cava, should she choose to try and block a second commission approval of the project.

This story was originally published May 5, 2026 at 5:37 PM.